Fat Contoller Redundant?

Redundancy for the Fat Controller?

By Kent Barker

Did I mention I’m involved with a little Café Theatre group?  We go round pubs and clubs performing a play about 18^th Century smuggling in Kent and Sussex, chronicling the activities of the Hawkhurst Gang.  Our initial amateur antics were considerably enhanced by the addition of two proper actors. Our leading lady is pretty much retired from previous roles in art house movies but our principal man still works regularly on stage and small screen.  In between bigger parts, James plays Sir Topham Hatt at Thomas the Tank Engine events.  (The character is more usually known as the Fat Controller, but James rather takes umbrage whenever we refer to him as such!)

Now I was vaguely aware that local railway societies held TTTE (Thomas The Tank Engine) days and that a locomotive, painted light blue and with a face stenciled on the front of the smokebox door, came along to entertain visiting toddlers – indeed I took my own lad to such an event a number of years back.  But we were not graced by the presence of Sir Topham Hatt and, quite frankly, I would never have guessed that this curious character would provide gainful employment for actors.

These TTTE days are part of a bigger passion – I would almost say obsession – that we have with railways.  Take my local one.  The Rother Valley line opened in 1900 running, eventually, between Tenterden and Robertsbridge.  In 1904 it became the Kent & East Sussex Light Railway and was taken over by British Railways in 1948.  This was not good news because the passenger service was closed six years later, and the entire line shut in 1961, two years before the notorious Dr Beeching recommended slashing about half the country’s entire rail network.

But were the people of the Rother valley going to take this lying down?  Oh, no. They immediately formed the Kent and East Sussex Railway Preservation Society and, by 1971, had steam trains running again between Tenterden and Rolvenden. Year by year they extended the derelict line and in 2004 reached Bodiam. Now plans are afoot to open the last part of the 14 mile section as far as Robertsbridge.

Before I question the wisdom of this let me say I love seeing the little trains chugging along and when I last travelled on the line - about 20 years ago -  it was thoroughly enjoyable, with lovely views across the valley and dinky little stations like Wittersham Road to pass through.  But I suppose I do rather question this whole nostalgia thing.  I’m old enough (just) to remember regular steam train services on main lines.  And thoroughly inefficient, noisy, dirty and smelly they were too.  The coming of the diesel and then the electric locomotive was a major improvement in environmental terms, let alone in reliability, punctuality and speed.

Today we have dozens of ‘heritage’ railways, generally charging extortionate sums for tourists to travel a few miles.  Heavens knows what it’s costing to relay the track from Bodiam to Robertsbridge, but as I discussed last week the restoration of a locomotive (GWR 4253) powerful enough to pull the carriages along this new stretch is costing at least £375,000.  And what do we get at the end of it?  Seasonal and infrequent trains that no one actually uses as proper transport.  Wouldn’t it be rather better to install a driverless, electric, one carriage train or tram shuttle service that would run all year round and at times when people actually needed to travel?  Tourists could still have the pleasure of travelling through the beautiful countryside, but on the line but it would actually be of benefit to others too.

In the part of France I frequent they’ve recently instituted a wonderful ‘go anywhere for one euro’ train fare for their small branch lines.  It means you can leave Beziers in the morning and travel up to the magnificent Tarn gorge for lunch or a picnic, gazing up in wonder at Norman Foster’s epic Millau Viaduct bridge.  But the train is also used by farmers taking their produce to market, or children travelling to school.  It’s seen as a public service worthy of receiving a subsidy.

In Britain we end up with a group of well meaning volunteers and fund-raisers bent on preserving costly outdated and redundant steam trains for tourists.   And even if my idea of re-opening all the Beeching lines for tram-trains is impractical, then better perhaps to turn them into cycleways, or footpaths or, another French innovation, the rail bike.  This enables families to pedal their way along the tracks, getting some exercise while admiring the view.

The trouble is, I suppose, that without heritage railways there’ll be nowhere for Thomas to run, and my mate, Fat Controller James, will be out of a job.

ends

What's in a (young) Name

For Times of TW

The Continuity of the Young

By Kent Barker

There’s a pleasing sense of continuity in village communities like mine. I was walking back home the other day—having driven my tractor up to the orchard in order to mow an area in preparation for our annual apple day—though that’s really another story.

So there Myrtle and I are, taking the short cut across the fields and through the woods before squeezing through the adjacent hedge into our meadow behind the house. Normally the only creatures we encounter are pheasants, the odd rabbit or fox and squirrels leaping from tree to tree. But occasionally we spy—or are spied by—a gamekeeper or one of the family of farmers who own the land.

The legality of our route is slightly questionable. It is private land with no public footpaths nearby. We have permission to walk in the woodland, but I think it was assumed that we’d approach it from the house, not the orchard.  However, the only other route home is down a busy road with no footpath and plenty of blind bends. So, from time to time, we walk across—or rather around the edge—of the field. Usually, a tractor driver, ploughing, spraying or harvesting, will ignore our incursion and get on with his work. But, on this occasion, we came face to face with one of the owners of the farm, transporting apple bins.

As is my wont, I gave him a cheery wave and was about to continue when he stopped his tractor and called over to us. I nodded at the bins and asked him about his apple harvest and about the new trees planted a couple of years back and dropped in a few comments about ‘my’ orchard in the hope he’d be sympathetically inclined towards a fellow grower.

It didn’t take long to get round to where I was heading and I mentioned the name of my house. “Oh,” he said, “you’re Young Barker.” And then, with an almost imperceptible pause: “Not so young any more, though, I see.”

Looking at his grizzled face, and grey locks, I made some rejoinder about how none of us was so young any more!

But it was that phrase “Young” Barker that got me thinking. Apart from anything else, when you get to my age, any suggestion of youthfulness is deeply appreciated. (Someone only a couple of years my senior referred to me as ‘lad’ recently. I was really chuffed.)

On the question of nomenclature, the choice of how to distinguish between the generations is an interesting one.  Our transatlantic cousins tend to do it with ‘junior’—a system I’ve never much liked. To be known as Barker ‘Jnr’ would seem somehow diminutive and redolent of private schooling. Or they use numerical suffixes. And while ‘Barker II’ might have a pleasingly regal ring it hardly distinguishes you as an individual.

So round here we’ve tended to use ‘Young’. Now, in my grandfather’s time, there was a gentleman named Turk who ran a lorry company up the road. His son was, therefore, known as Young Turk (rather a complimentary term I’d have thought but, apparently, it technically refers to the revolutionaries who deposed the Ottoman Empire’s Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908—though I’m fairly sure our Turk had nothing to do with such radical activities.)

Anyway, by my father’s time, ‘Young’ Turk was no longer so young, had taken over the transport firm, and had a son of his own. But, instead of slipping the appellation down one generation, the latest member of the family was henceforth referred to as Young Young Turk. Which I suppose had some logic.  And it wasn’t until ‘Old’ Turk died that anyone thought of promoting the other two. Though this led, inevitably, to some confusion. “I see Turk’s bought a new, lorry,” my mother might remark. “Which Turk?” my father would query. “Young Turk?” she’d say. “Yes, but is that Young Turk or Young Young Turk?” father would ask.

So, it was with some amusement that I discovered I was known as ‘Young Barker’ and wondered what the farmer might call my son, who also occasionally walks the dog across his land.

The farming family is, incidentally, called Cyster. Written down, this is reasonably clear, but in conversation sounds exactly like ‘sister’.  Since the farm is run by a pair of brothers this also has scope for copious confusion.  As in: “the older Cyster brother’s son is known as the young Cyster, as is his male cousin, while their aunt, is the Cyster’s sister.” It reminds me of that old riddle: brothers and sisters have I none but that man’s father is my father’s son.  Who am I?

I wonder if it might be easier all round to stick to given names?

ends.

Ashamed To Be British (2)

Hastings Interdependent Press DID publish this:

Huddled Masses That Make Me Ashamed To Be British

By Kent Barker

One of the joys of living in South East England is jumping onto a ferry and, some 90 minutes later, sitting down to an excellent meal in a French restaurant.

Sadly, a trip to Calais is by no means the jolly outing it used to be.  The day I was there earlier this month, two refugees died trying to get to England – one by a train in the tunnel and one on the motorway heading to the port.  It brought to 16 the number of deaths since June.

6000 people are currently in the Calais “Jungle” (what an awful term for an unofficial refugee camp). Home Office figures say that in the past year there have been 39,000 attempts to cross the channel illegally - suggesting every person has tried at least half a dozen times. Meanwhile French police are reported to have arrested 18,000 people in the first half of this year – averaging each person 3 times.

But these statistics are not as shocking – or as saddening – as the sight of people tramping from one end of the town to the other, hanging around in groups or sheltering under motorway bridges.  Or as upsetting as the sight of van-loads of police blocking entrances and exits to the Port or the miles of newly erected metal fences topped with razor-wire.

The latter is courtesy of me and you. Our government has spent £9 million on secure zones for lorries.  The fence at Coquelles is called – with Orwellian inappropriateness - the “National Barrier Asset”. 

I am not advocating opening our borders to everyone.  But I do seriously question Cameron’s policy of taking refugees who are a thousand miles away or more, while ignoring those at our very doorstep.  And the ‘commitment’ to take 20,000 refugees over 5 years means just 4,000 a year.  By contrast Germany is planning to take in 800,000 asylum seekers this year.

 Knowing these hungry and desperate people are so near rather turns the fine French food to ashes in the mouth. As you sit down to lunch try reciting the stanza by Emma Lazarus that adorns the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: / I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Sometimes I’m rather ashamed to be British.

Read more at: KentCountryMatters.Blogspot.Com

Ashamed To Be British

The Times wouldn't publish this one ... I wonder why not?

Huddled Masses That Make Me Ashamed To Be British

By Kent Barker

In a dusty box in the attic there’s a lovely little photograph of my father, my sister and my aunt on a day trip to Calais in the early 1970s.  It’s one of the joys of living here in the South East of England.  You can so easily jump onto a ferry and, a little over 90 minutes later, be sitting down to an excellent meal in a French restaurant. Since that family trip I’ve probably been over once or twice every year to buy wine and enjoy the food. 

The coming of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 was an exciting innovation and meant a couple of extra hours shopping or gastonomising. (I’m not at all sure that’s a word, but I dare say you’ll get my drift.)  It was the tunnel, though, that helped curtail ferry services to Boulogne which was always a much nicer destination for lunch.

Ever since Calais was annexed in 1347 by Edward III, the port has had a special resonance for the English.  It was a vital point of export for the British wool trade which made Kent and East Sussex so wealthy from the Middle Ages onwards.  No wonder Queen Mary declared its name would be found engraved on her heart after she ‘lost’ it to the French in 1537. Later, stout British resistance at the Siege of Calais in 1940 held up advancing German Panzers long enough to enable the Dunkirk evacuation.

Anyway, fascinating as this history is, the point I am getting around to is that a trip to Calais today is by no means the jolly outing it used to be.  On the same day I was there earlier this month, two refugees were killed trying to get to England – one by a train in the tunnel and one on the motorway heading to the port.  It brought to 16 the number who have died since June.

There are calculated to be as many as 6000 people currently camping in or around Calais hoping to get to Britain.  Whether they are Asylum Seekers, or Refugees, or Economic Migrants is not certain – and may be irrelevant.  Certainly it seems that that the large Afghan and Syrian contingent are genuine refugees seeking political asylum.  But even if there are some who are motivated more by money, they’ve got themselves into a pretty desperate situation. 

Official British figures say that in the past year there have been 39,000 attempts to cross the channel illegally.  But given there are only 6000 people in the “Jungle” (what an awful term for an unofficial refugee camp), it suggests that every person has tried at least half a dozen times – and that doesn’t take into account those who have succeeded. Meanwhile French police are reported to have arrested 18,000 people in the first half of this year - every person 3 times!

But these statistics are not as shocking – or as saddening – as the sight of people tramping from one end of the town to the other, hanging around in groups or sheltering under motorway bridges.  Or as upsetting as the sight of van-loads of police blocking entrances and exits to the Port and Eurostar terminal, or the sniffer dogs going from lorry to lorry in the car-parks, or the mile after mile of newly erected metal fences topped with razor-wire.

The latter is courtesy of me and you. The government has spent £9 million of our money on fences and secure zones for lorries.  The fence at Coquelles is called – in the most awful Orwellian inappropriateness - the “National Barrier Asset”.  How much better, surely, to spend the £9 million resettling refugees in Britain?

Now I am not advocating opening our borders to everyone.  But I do seriously question David Cameron’s policy of taking refugees who are a thousand miles away or more, while ignoring those at our very doorstep.  And anyway the Prime Minister’s ‘commitment’ to take 20,000 refugees over 5 years is just 4,000 a year.  By contrast Germany is planning to take in 800,000 asylum seekers this year, while Turkey already has 1.8 million Syrians within its boarders.  And don’t I remember in the late 1990s Britain agreed to taking more than a 100,000 Kosovan Refugees?  All of which makes the current ‘offer’ pretty small beer.

Knowing these hungry and desperate people are just a short distance away rather turns the fine French food to ashes in the mouth as you sit down for lunch.  But as you pour the wine you can recite to yourself the stanza by Emma Lazarus that adorns the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: / I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Sometimes I’m rather ashamed to be British.

ends.

Is Renting Wrong?

For Times of TW

What’s so wrong with renting your home?

By Kent Barker

Oh, no. Here we go again. A government policy designed to achieve one thing is going to have precisely the opposite effect. When, in five or ten years time, you come to look back on the crisis it will cause, just remember: I told you so!

In case you haven’t guessed, it’s housing again. And, although the difficulty of finding a home is equally problematic in towns and cities, I contend that it’s out here in the country that people have the hardest time.

Take Kath: a hard-working woman with two children in their late twenties. They’d both left home and she was just relishing having her house back to herself to enjoy a little peace and quiet with her husband. But then her daughter’s flat–share came to an end and she had to move back home. Even if she could get another person to share with, the chances of them being able to find suitable accommodation at a price they can afford on minimum wage jobs (she’s a care home assistant) are next to nil. 

Then Kath’s son asked if he could move back into the family home after he split up with his partner. Kath loves her children to bits. She just doesn’t particularly love living with them anymore. But she can’t see how they can possibly get their own place. Private sector rentals are too high round here and there is almost no social housing available. Plus, as previously discussed, there will soon be even less under the government’s plan to allow Housing Association tenants the ‘right’ to buy. 

So Kath’s kids’ best hope is to wait for a new affordable rental unit to be built. For the past 25 years this was most likely to happen under a Section 106 agreement. That’s a deal by which a developer has to provide affordable homes or a financial contribution towards them, in return for the local authority granting planning permission. It’s a great idea. Make the developers –and thus the private housing market—provide or contribute towards some public housing.

A private hospital in my village wanted to finance an expansion by building 40 new houses on its site. Good; we need new homes. But they’d all have been sold at premium prices which few locals could afford. After an impassioned speech at the borough council planning meeting, I persuaded them to stick by their Section 106 responsibility and actually provide eight affordable units on the same site. Assuming it actually happens and that they are affordable rental units (and there’s many a slip…) then it may rate as the single most useful thing I achieved in my two terms on the parish council.

But now David Cameron is proposing to abandon Section 106 agreements on the back of his “Generation Rent to Generation Buy” commitment. It’s a good sound-bite and, if it does indeed produce large numbers of starter homes at 20% below the market price, then that could be a useful contribution to the housing crisis. But to do it at the expense of affordable rental homes is sheer madness.

Just look at the figures. You’d need to be earning £77,000 a year in London or £50,000 outside to be able to get a mortgage for one of these ‘Starter Homes’. Well, sorry, but you might as well ask Kath’s children to fly to Mars as to hope ever to have that sort of money. And what about those on the wrong end of the Government’s £12 billion benefit cuts, or those three million hard working families who each stands to lose £1,000 a year in tax credits? Does anyone seriously think they are going to be able to afford a Cameron Starter Home?

Another more fundamental question raises its head. Just what is so wrong with renting? I’m not talking about sink estates or tower blocks, but pleasant well-maintained housing association OR private homes. I was brought up in a rented place. It was, admittedly, the wing of a Georgian house owned by a charity in Blackheath, but it was the sort of place we’d never have been able to afford to buy.

 They happily do it in Germany and Switzerland and Austria and Denmark.  Even France has a (slightly) bigger rented sector than we do. I’ll concede that much greater security of tenure and serious rent controls need to be introduced.  But it’s this obsession with home ownership that has so skewed the housing market over the past 50 years.

You may say that huge individual wealth has been generated from the exorbitant rise in property prices—but I’d argue that’s exactly what’s made it so impossible for the next generation to get on the housing ladder.

So I predict abandoning Section 106 agreements and artificially curtailing ‘Generation Rent’ will only make things worse.  Much worse.

ends

Organic Ends and Means

For Times of TW

Weakest Link Breaks Organic Chain

By Kent Barker

            It’s been an excellent harvest this year.  Enthusiastic gap year students have been filling ‘cubie’ bags full of ripe fruit while our ancient tractor lifts them onto trailers to be taken away for juicing and cider making.

The orchard I help to manage has, for the past several years, been fully organic.  Although no pesticides had been used on the land or the trees for probably 40 years before, we still had to undergo a five year conversion process before getting our certification.  When it finally came I was thrilled.  I am not an organic zealot, but I do firmly believe that using fewer chemicals to produce our food will be of substantial benefit to our health.

            Ever since the devastating side effects of DDT became commonly accepted, we’ve known that many agri-chemicals are a public health hazard.  Yet we blithely accept them.   If you can’t see it or taste it, then it must be OK, mustn’t it?  And anyway that’s what the government regulators are there for surely?  To protect us from rapacious chemical companies whose motivation seems driven more by profit than public health?

            OK, ok, enough tub thumping.  But just Google ‘Glyphosates’ and see how long it took before the World Health Organisation concluded they are “probably carcinogenic to humans”.  And then ask what steps are in place to stop the herbicide being routinely used on British crops. (Sorry, that’s a trick question because as far as I know there are NO steps are in place to stop the likely cancer-causing chemical being routinely sprayed on crops.)

            Quick, take me back to my orchard where I can calm down a bit. For here thistles proliferate and insects munch contentedly on the apples because neither herbicides (weed-killers) nor pesticides (bug killers) have been used for decades – and certainly not since we got our organic status.  But now that’s all under threat.

            A condition of our Soil Association accreditation is that the orchard may only be grazed by organic sheep.  (I know, it’s a slightly comical concept.  But if an animal that’s been eating chemically treated grass is moved to our land it will excrete the chemicals there.)  So we looked round for, and found, an organic sheep farmer.  In fact all their meat including beef and pork was also organic. However, to market it as such they had to graze their livestock only on organic pasture, avoid routine use of antibiotics and, crucially, have the meat butchered by an organic butcher.

            All this was fine until their butcher ceased to be organic. The trouble is there’s not another one anywhere within range. So now, even though all their animals are raised and grazed organically, they can’t be butchered organically and the meat can’t be marketed as organic. Well, perhaps that’s not the end of the world.  It’s great meat and they’ll probably get the same price for it as before.  But, if they are not selling their product as organic, why go through the bureaucratic rigmarole of being certified as an organic producer, and pay hundreds of pounds a year to the Soil Association? However, if they cease to be certified as organic, then we could also lose our status if they go on grazing their sheep in the orchard.

            Sadly this chain reaction seems to be happening across the country. Organic certified land is in decline (4% down in the most recent figures) but more alarmingly land being converted to organic fell 24% for the same year.  Meanwhile organic producers and processors also declined by more than 6% - a  trend that’s been in place for at least the past five years.

            Ironically, as Britain’s organic production is declining, our demand for organic products is holding up and even slightly increasing.  Which means imports, and more food miles, with more land in other countries like Spain and Austria going over to organic.

            So our orchard is faced with a serious dilemma. It costs us more than £600 a year to be certified by the Soil Association – more than we make from the sale of our apples.  Yet we don’t sell them to an organic cider maker. And soon we may not have organic sheep because an alternative organic flock could be impossible to find. So it seems there is no financial logic in retaining our organic status.  But I, for one, will be very sad to see it go.  It’s been a badge of pride and goes hand in hand with our ethos of preserving a traditional Kentish orchard and enhancing its biodiversity.  Plus we’d be simply accelerating the trend away from pesticide and herbicide free farming.  Which is all wrong and completely contrary to the growing scientific and medical evidence that we are poisoning our planet and its population. It’s a conundrum.  

ends.

Nuclear Dogs

Dog walks in a post-nuclear landscape

By Kent Barker

            Our daily walk usually takes Myrtle and me down lanes and footpaths near our village.  We also like to tramp the Hills and beaches around Hastings.  Occasionally, though, the spirit of adventure takes us further afield and we venture to Dungeness to walk over the pebbles.

            There is an otherworldliness to this peninsular. Perhaps that’s why it was the chosen location for episodes of Doctor Who. It’s rather hard to define quite what sets it apart. It could be the complete absence of trees. Or the strange cabbage-like plants that struggle to survive on the inhospitable terrain.  Perhaps it’s the abandoned and rotting fishing boats or the improbable single gauge railway track, the grey lighthouse set inland from the ocean, the odd oak boardwalks leading from the road to the shore, or the dour wooden bungalows where some have chosen to make their home.  I mean, who would actively chose to live on the bleak monochrome promontory when there is so much lush and green Kentish countryside a few miles inland?

            Well, obviously and most famously Derek Jarman did.  But then anyone who was production designer for Ken Russell’s The Devils, or produced the homo-erotic Sebestiane might well have felt at home at Dungeness.

            But so far I’ve expended two hundred words on this strange place without mentioning the elephant that takes up so much of the room – the nuclear power plants.  Well, plant singular, now that the 1960s Maxnox reactor has been decommissioned.  But the Advanced Gas-cooled reactor, Dungeness B, is still busy smashing atoms and providing us with the electricity we have come to rely on.  But even this is nearing the end of its life and will be shut down in 2028.  Will another be built on the site? No, because of the fears of flood-risk.  Which hardly fosters confidence in the existing facility.  Just look what happened at Fukushima when the emergency generators were inundated by sea-water and stopped pumping vital coolant round the reactors. 

OK,  that was as a result of an earthquake initiated tsunami the odds of which happening may be a million to one against in the Straight of Dover,  but nuclear accidents can and do happen.  With devastating results.  Take Windscale in Cumbria, or Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, or Chernobyl in the Ukraine. 

But while the residents of Kent may be relieved that they’ve only another decade or so to go before their nuclear facility closes, those in Bridgwater or Western-Super-Mare or even Bristol and Cardiff may not be so sanguine. They are about to get a brand spanking new European Pressurised Reactor.  Well, they will if the government can sort out the financing.  The plant is expected to cost around £25 billion and investment was to have come from the French company EDF.  They secured a fixed supply-price deal under which they would have made profits of around 30% while British consumers would have paid   £92.50 per megawatt hour (the average UK wholesale price currently is around £50 PMH).  Thus Hinkley C would have been the most expensive nuclear power plant in the world.  However this is all in the past tense because EDF can’t afford the investment having run into financial problems with its nuclear plant at Flamanville in France.  Which hardly inspires confidence.  So what’s to be done?  Well whenever you want some cheap kit where do you look?  Why China of course.  Which is just what George Osborne is currently doing.

Now, I’ve nothing against trade with China, nor do I disparage the quality of Chinese technology.  But I do wonder that there isn’t anyone nearer to home who could build it for us.  British companies even.  And what, fundamentally, I don’t understand is why we can’t finance it ourselves?  It seems so simple.  The government issues bonds to raise the £25 billion and repays them with the profit from the sale of the electricity.  It was offering a 30% return to EDF and will, no doubt, have to make the Chinese a similar deal.  But, crucially, it doesn’t need to be done by the profit-motivated private companies!  Massive infrastructure projects like this surely are the responsibility of the public sector.

I was planning to go into the arguments for and against nuclear energy in the first place. Perhaps – and it’s a big perhaps – nuclear is the least environmentally damaging of the non-renewable forms of energy production.  Perhaps we do need the massive power stations for continuity of supply.  And perhaps ceasing to burn fossil fuels should be the main priority.

But hand in hand with that MUST surely be a much greater reliance on locally produced green energy.  Your solar panels and biomass boilers.  Except the government has slashed the subsidies for them. 

I’d sentence past and present energy ministers to live on Dungeness until they saw reason.